Although radiotherapy (RT) is used for the treatment of cancers, including liver cancer, radiation-induced liver disease (RILD) has emerged as a major limitation of RT. Radiation-induced toxicities ...in nontumorous liver tissues are associated with the development of numerous symptoms that may limit the course of therapy or have serious chronic side effects, including late fibrosis. Although the clinical characteristics of RILD patients have been relatively well described, the understanding of RILD pathogenesis has been hampered by a lack of reliable animal models for RILD. Despite efforts to develop suitable experimental animal models for RILD, current animal models rarely present hepatic veno-occlusive disease, the pathological hallmark of human RILD patients, resulting in highly variable results in RILD-related studies. Therefore, we introduce the concept and clinical characteristics of RILD and propose a feasible explanation for RILD pathogenesis. In addition, currently available animal models of RILD are reviewed, focusing on similarities with human RILD and clues to understanding the mechanisms of RILD progression. Based on these findings from RILD research, we present potential therapeutic strategies for RILD and prospects for future RILD studies. Therefore, this review helps broaden our understanding for developing effective treatment strategies for RILD.
Oxidative stress is induced by an imbalanced redox states, involving either excessive generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) or dysfunction of the antioxidant system. The brain is one of organs ...especially vulnerable to the effects of ROS because of its high oxygen demand and its abundance of peroxidation-susceptible lipid cells. Previous studies have demonstrated that oxidative stress plays a central role in a common pathophysiology of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. Antioxidant therapy has been suggested for the prevention and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, although the results with regard to their efficacy of treating neurodegenerative disease have been inconsistent. In this review, we will discuss the role of oxidative stress in the pathophysiology of neurodegenerative diseases and in vivo measurement of an index of damage by oxidative stress. Moreover, the present knowledge on antioxidant in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and future directions will be outlined.
Defect-enhanced energy storage
Dielectric capacitors are vital components of electronics and power systems. The thin-film materials of which capacitors are composed are usually optimized by changing ...the material composition. However, Kim
et al.
found that postprocessing an already effective thin-film dielectric by high-energy ion bombardment further improved the material because of the introduction of specific types of defects that ultimately improved the energy storage performance. The results suggest that postprocessing may be important for developing the next generation of capacitors.
Science
, this issue p.
81
High-energy ion bombardment considerably improves the dielectric properties of a relaxor ferroelectric thin film.
Dielectric capacitors can store and release electric energy at ultrafast rates and are extensively studied for applications in electronics and electric power systems. Among various candidates, thin films based on relaxor ferroelectrics, a special kind of ferroelectric with nanometer-sized domains, have attracted special attention because of their high energy densities and efficiencies. We show that high-energy ion bombardment improves the energy storage performance of relaxor ferroelectric thin films. Intrinsic point defects created by ion bombardment reduce leakage, delay low-field polarization saturation, enhance high-field polarizability, and improve breakdown strength. We demonstrate energy storage densities as high as ~133 joules per cubic centimeter with efficiencies exceeding 75%. Deterministic control of defects by means of postsynthesis processing methods such as ion bombardment can be used to overcome the trade-off between high polarizability and breakdown strength.
Roles of Autophagy in Oxidative Stress Yun, Hyeong Rok; Jo, Yong Hwa; Kim, Jieun ...
International journal of molecular sciences,
05/2020, Letnik:
21, Številka:
9
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Autophagy is a catabolic process for unnecessary or dysfunctional cytoplasmic contents by lysosomal degradation pathways. Autophagy is implicated in various biological processes such as programmed ...cell death, stress responses, elimination of damaged organelles and development. The role of autophagy as a crucial mediator has been clarified and expanded in the pathological response to redox signalling. Autophagy is a major sensor of the redox signalling. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are highly reactive molecules that are generated as by-products of cellular metabolism, principally by mitochondria. Mitochondrial ROS (mROS) are beneficial or detrimental to cells depending on their concentration and location. mROS function as redox messengers in intracellular signalling at physiologically low level, whereas excessive production of mROS causes oxidative damage to cellular constituents and thus incurs cell death. Hence, the balance of autophagy-related stress adaptation and cell death is important to comprehend redox signalling-related pathogenesis. In this review, we attempt to provide an overview the basic mechanism and function of autophagy in the context of response to oxidative stress and redox signalling in pathology.
The liver has a wide range of physiological functions in the body, and its health is maintained by complex cross-talk among hepatic cells, including parenchymal hepatocytes and nonparenchymal cells. ...Exosomes, which are one method of cellular communication, are endosomal-derived small vesicles that are released by donor cells and delivered to the target cells at both short and long distances. Because exosomes carry a variety of cargoes, including proteins, mRNAs, microRNAs and other noncoding RNAs originating from donor cells, exosomes convey cellular information that enables them to potentially serve as biomarkers and therapeutics in liver diseases. Hepatocytes release exosomes to neighboring hepatocytes or nonparenchymal cells to regulate liver regeneration and repair. Nonparenchymal cells, including hepatic stellate cells, liver sinusoidal endothelial cells, and cholangiocytes, also secrete exosomes to regulate liver remodeling upon liver injury. Exosomes that are released from liver cancer cells create a favorable microenvironment for cancer growth and progression. In this review, we summarize and discuss the current findings and understanding of exosome-mediated intercellular communication in the liver, with a particular focus on the function of exosomes in both health and disease. Based on the current findings, we suggest the potential applications of exosomes as biomarkers and therapeutics for liver diseases.
Tracing the controversies surrounding commercial blood procurement in Japan, this article inquires into the reconfiguration of social boundaries, bodies, and substances through blood banks. In Japan, ...designated day laborers' enclaves, known as yoseba, became major pools of not only cheap labor force, but also of vital substances in the mid-twentieth century. Despite recurrent public health scandals, commercial blood banks continued to resurge in these districts, until they were completely replaced by the centralized donation-based Red Cross system in 1990. Analyzing media reports, published accounts, and policy papers, this article demonstrates how "sold blood" collected by commercial blood banks became the quintessence of "bad blood" in the process of this transition. Although blood donation is considered as an occasion to celebrate social solidarity today, this article shows that the specter of "bad blood" continues to haunt the body politic of Japan.
This paper proposes facial expression recognition (FER) with the wild data set. In particular, this paper chiefly deals with two issues, occlusion and intra-similarity problems. The attention ...mechanism enables one to use the most relevant areas of facial images for specific expressions, and the triplet loss function solves the intra-similarity problem that sometimes fails to aggregate the same expression from different faces and vice versa. The proposed approach for the FER is robust to occlusion, and it uses a spatial transformer network (STN) with an attention mechanism to utilize specific facial region that dominantly contributes (or that is the most relevant) to particular facial expressions, e.g., anger, contempt, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise. In addition, the STN model is connected to the triplet loss function to improve the recognition rate which outperforms the existing approaches that employ cross-entropy or other approaches using only deep neural networks or classical methods. The triplet loss module alleviates limitations of the intra-similarity problem, leading to further improvement of the classification. Experimental results are provided to substantiate the proposed approach for FER, and the result outperforms the recognition rate in more practical cases, e.g., occlusion. The quantitative result provides FER results with more than 2.09% higher accuracy compared to the existing FER results in CK+ data sets and 0.48% higher than the accuracy of the results with the modified ResNet model in the FER2013 data set.
We analyzed reports for 59,073 contacts of 5,706 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) index patients reported in South Korea during January 20-March 27, 2020. Of 10,592 household contacts, 11.8% had ...COVID-19. Of 48,481 nonhousehold contacts, 1.9% had COVID-19. Use of personal protective measures and social distancing reduces the likelihood of transmission.
Repeated exposure to traumatic experiences may put professional firefighters at increased risk of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To date, however, the rate of PTSD symptoms, unmet ...need for mental health treatment, and barriers to treatment have only been investigated in subsamples rather than the total population of firefighters. We conducted a nationwide, total population-based survey of all currently employed South Korean firefighters (n = 39,562). The overall response rate was 93.8% (n = 37,093), with 68.0% (n = 26,887) complete responses for all variables. The rate of current probable PTSD was estimated as 5.4%. Among those with current probable PTSD (n = 1,995), only a small proportion (9.7%) had received mental health treatment during the past month. For those who had not received treatment, perceived barriers of accessibility to treatment (29.3%) and concerns about potential stigma (33.8%) were reasons for not receiving treatment. Although those with higher PTSD symptom severity and functional impairment were more likely to seek treatment, greater symptom severity and functional impairment were most strongly associated with increased concerns about potential stigma. This nationwide study points to the need for new approaches to promote access to mental health treatment in professional firefighters.
Aims and objectives
To identify an association between overweight or obesity in early childhood and metabolic syndrome in adults.
Background
Early childhood overweight or obesity is important because ...it can predict metabolic syndrome in adulthood. A longer period of overweight or obesity leads to the accumulation of more risk factors. However, there are insufficient and inconsistent studies on this issue.
Design
A systematic review and meta‐analysis.
Methods
We followed the Meta‐Analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology guideline, MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane library and CINAHL electronic databases as well as reference lists of included studies were searched, without published date restriction. We used the Newcastle‐Ottawa Scale to assess the quality of the observational studies in the systematic review, and the meta‐analysis was performed using random‐effects models.
Results
All of the included studies were published from 2008–2014, and the participants of this study were only Asians or Europeans. A total of 12 results from five studies were included in the meta‐analysis. Overweight or obesity in early childhood was associated with a higher risk of adult metabolic syndrome compared with the controls. When confirmed in each age group (at birth, 0–2 and 2–6 years), there was a statistically significant difference before and after the age of 2 years. As a result of the meta‐regression, when the age of the children increased, the effect size of adult metabolic syndrome for overweight or obesity also increased.
Conclusions
The results confirm that the aetiology of metabolic syndrome includes long‐term impacts from the early stage of life and indicate that early intervention for overweight or obesity is needed. Relevance to clinical practice: these findings could help community and clinical health nurses recognize the risk of overweight or obesity in early life, and provide evidence to develop and implement the preventive intervention for early childhood.
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